Will Ms. Crappystaff reimburse Ms. Brain for the wasted office visit and the time lost from other duties/diversions? Because if I was Ms. Brain I'd be willing to tell a small claims judge why I'm taking up his afternoon. I might also see if my favorite tilecrawling ambulance chaser was interested in 33% of damages suffered by delaying treatment. (Last time I checked, cranio-rectal inversion was not a defense for retty much anything.)

I'm constantly amazed at the people who work in medicine who do not understand how HIPAA works. My favorite was a nursing assistant in the hospital who kept yelling at me and grabbing at me because she wanted to know where my drain was.

Note that while I was in a section of the hospital where most of the other patients had had surgery, I not only didn't have surgery but was IN ISOLATION, with big warning signs and mask/glove/etc. dispensers on the door. She was not wearing gloves or gown or mask yet had no problems trying to pull off my gown with her bare hands, near what might have been a surgical site.

When I pointed out that I was NOT a surgical patient and that that was clearly in my chart, she insisted that she hadn't read my chart because "HIPAA says I'm not allowed to look at it".

Uh, no. HIPAA means you read the chart. HIPAA means you share relevant information with other medical personnel. HIPAA means that if you don't understand how HIPAA works, you need a refresher class, probably between when you're fired and (if) you get your next job.

My favorite are people who insist that HIPAA means they can't tell me ANYTHING about a patient. Um, no, it does not mean that. We are both part of the patient's healthcare team and I am not asking you for gossip. People can be so dumb. I hate the constant HIPAA 'refreshers' I have to take, but with people like this I guess I can see why we have to do it.

So to some, HIPAA means that even the medical team can't read your chart? And to some it means that even the referred doctor can't get your reports? That explains what happened to me recently as I waited in the ER for some tests to be completed on my mother. I told her babysitter that she did NOT need to join me in the ER, yet she showed up anyway. When I told her that I had yet to be told of any results (because frankly, they were none of her business), she went to the nurses desk and demanded to be told--and the nurse told her! Without even asking who she was! She must have gotten one of the nurses who interpreted the P as "public."

UVa Charlotte was quite adamant that HIPAA meant that they could not tell my niece-in-law why her mother had gone from having a gamma knife procedure for her brain aneurysm to open brain surgery, nor could they let her see the charts, even though she was her mother's medical proxy after her mother had a stroke during said surgery. We were informed that they could only release the information to another medical professional, and that we would have to pay for the copying and sending of said chart.

If we had had the money I would have had them send it to my father, since he is Dr., and I know they wouldn't have bothered to check for a medical license. (He's a PhD.)

As a patient (the kind who has seen too many doctors but still has time to be fairly on top of things), I assume that it's my responsibility when I have one doctor that ordered tests and another doctor that I want to look at those tests that either:

a) I have to call the first doctor's office at least a business day in advance to request that they fax the information to the second doctor's office.

or

b) get a copy of my report or x rays or whatever, and bring it with me to the appointment.

My experience is that even when the doctors are supposedly in the same system, sometimes their computers are funny or whatever, and every time I haven't done A or B, I've wished that I had (especially the time I went in for a procedure and didn't bring in the previous anesthesiologist's report that said which sedative I'm allergic to, because I sure didn't remember what it was, and even though the doctor said not to bother, it was the same hospital and they'd be able to access my records, they did not, in fact, manage to access my records).

In training, one of the other residents developed palpitations while rotating at the VA, so she went to the ER and had an EKG. When the ER attending caught her looking at her own EKG, she upbraided her for violating her [the resident/patient's] own confidentiality (!) and reported her to her residency director.

In our institution, we have to sign a waiver in medical records giving ourselves permission to look up our own results in the EMR. I don't know how looking at my own chart violates HIPPA, but I guess they just wanted to cover their bases?

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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